CRUCIFYING KRISTOF: Killing the pigs among The Others!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Part 4—A (shining) path appears: Nicholas Kristof’s recent column about Kevin Green seemed peculiar to us in at least several ways.

Most peculiar was the way he savaged “lots of Americans” for their (imagined) reaction to his late friend’s difficult life—an (imagined) reaction which, in fairly obvious ways, would make fairly obvious sense.

Kristof told a tragic story as he sketched his late friend’s difficult life. According to Kristof, Green had failed to pay court-ordered child support for his twin sons. This had reached the point where Green had his driver’s license revoked.

Beyond that, Green’s brother said that Green might have tried harder to find a job if not for his disability checks. And alas! According to Kristof’s story, it seems that Kevin Green’s sons may be paying the price for the dysfunction Kristof seemed to describe.

According to Kristof, his friend’s sons have “had trouble in school and with the law.” They have been “jailed for drug and other offenses.”

On its face, that’s a tragic story, with two young people as its apparent victims.

Personally, we wouldn’t be inclined to judge Green based on the sketchy tale a person like Kristof might choose to tell in his latest sanctimonious column. That said, it would hardly be surprising if people less blinkered than Kristof reacted in a negative way to the conduct he attributed to his late friend.

On its face, Kristof is telling a horrible story. In his story, a father seems to have failed his sons—and they seem to be paying the price.

It would hardly be surprising if people thought Kristof’s friend had behaved rather badly. We wouldn’t voice that judgment ourselves. But it would hardly be crazy or strange if someone else ventured such thoughts.

Kristof seemed to see none of this. He closed his very peculiar column with one of his increasingly frequent moral diatribes, in which he savaged The Others:

KRISTOF (1/25/15): Kevin wrote a will a few days before he died. He bequeathed his life’s savings of $3,500 to his mom for his funeral expenses. Anything left over is to be divided between his children—and he begs them not to fight over it. His ashes will be sprinkled on the farm.

I have trouble diagnosing just what went wrong in that odyssey from sleek distance runner [in high school] to his death at 54, but the lack of good jobs was central to it. Sure, Kevin made mistakes, but his dad had opportunities for good jobs that Kevin never had.

So, Kevin Green, R.I.P. You were a good man—hardworking and always on the lookout for someone to help—yet you were overturned by riptides of inequality. Those who would judge you don’t have a clue. They could use a dose of your own empathy.

Was Kevin Green “a good man—hardworking and always on the lookout for someone to help?”

We have no way of knowing. But on its face, that seems like a somewhat peculiar assertion, given the tragic and horrible story Kristof himself had just told.

In that story, Kristof’s friend fails to support his young sons—and his sons end up in jail. Weirdly, though, Kristof built his entire column around an attack on people who might think poorly of his friend—on “lots of Americans” who would be “harshly judgmental,” due to their “acerbic condescension” and their “empathy gap.”

In reality, no one had said a word about Green, who wasn’t a public person. That said, would it be surprising or strange if some people were inclined to judge Green poorly, given Kristof’s story?

Actually no—that wouldn’t be strange at all! What’s strange is the way Kristof himself blew past those abandoned boys.

Kristof was raised by two exceptional parents. Might he have an “empathy gap” when it comes to a couple of kids whose parents seem to have failed?

Kristof is perhaps too blinded by dogma to see the shape of his story. But his story seems to involve some truly unfortunate conduct.

Despite this fairly obvious fact, Kristof rails against the “wealthy people” who he imagines saying bad things about his hardworking friend. He bases his denunciation on upper-income respondents’ reactions to a single survey question, while failing to note that 29 percent of people below the poverty line responded the very same way.

Dumb and dishonest? Disgusting and strange? We’d describe this peculiar, unhelpful column in all those ways, and in several more.

What are the actual facts about Kevin Green’s life? Ultimately, we have no idea. Nor do we get any real sense that Nicholas Kristof does.

That said, Kristof wrote a very strange column, which led to a strange conclusion. A man who fails to support his children ends up as his moral exemplar. People imagined to criticize him are attacked as moral lepers.

Given the story Kristof told, how could he end up praising his friend while savaging those who might be inclined to disapprove of his friend’s conduct? Alas! We’d say a dumb, self-impressed prima donna was trafficking in tribal dogma again.

Increasingly, that is the way we operate over here on the pseudo-left.

As the years have gone by, Kristof’s suffocating sanctimony has grown and grown. He parades the world on PBS with teams of female movie stars, letting us gaze at his drive-by moral greatness, whose judgments sometimes strike us as peculiar. In his spare time, he churns out some of the dumbest, but most sanctimonious, columns in the known world.

Increasingly, Kristof’s columns function in the way this recent column did—with large groups of Others being attacked for reactions which really aren’t all that strange. Increasingly, this is the way our tribal leaders behave on the pseudo-left.

In Kristof’s recent column, “lots of Americans” were savaged for an “empathy gap” because they presumably wouldn’t approve of men who fail to support their children. But then, in a recent, five-column series by Kristof, millions of “white people” were condescended to and judged because they just “don’t get it”—because their reactions to racial issues aren’t exactly like those of our self-impressed tribal saint.

Increasingly, moralistic tribal judgment has become our brand on the pseudo-left. We denounce large swaths of The Other Tribe, sometimes in the dumbest possible manner.

We tell ourselves that The Others are bad, even when such people state views which aren’t especially crazy. This is the discourse of The Elect—and uh-oh!

Recently, Kristof himself was attacked in precisely this fashion!

Uh-oh! Saint Kristof offered a tweet about a racial matter—a tweet which was judged to be less than tribally perfect.

Kristof’s comment wasn’t especially crazy. But so what? In the manner of our tribe, other saints among The Elect lit into the running-dog pundit! We happily fell to killing the pig, just as that author described.

Increasingly, Kristof plays a lower-key form of this sad tribal game. Now, the game was turned against him.

Does this (shining) path lead to success? Only those movie stars know!

"Red bait" is not what his Maoist references are about. Go read about the Cultural Revolution in China -- Wikipedia will do fine. Pay particular attention to the adherence to party doctrine, to the role of reeducation and the way in which those deviating were hunted down, along with anyone and anything not perfectly attuned to party. That is the analogy he is making, not any sort of reference to any American communist path or even to the witch hunts. They are not anything like the massive upheaval in China perpetrated by the left on its own adherents, not even dissenters. This is not a Dennis Miller obscurity. It is a major part of modern history that we should all know about. Somerby is warning the left about what happens when it attacks its own on the basis of purity of doctrine and expression.

Of course I know what shining path is. It is a casual reference to an ideological split among communists in Peru. It is not the point of his continuing Maoist references. It was wordplay. The larger point that unites Shining Path with his overall theme about the American left attacking its own, is about ideological purity. If you understood that, you wouldn't come back with a stupid remark about how shining path has nothing to do with the cultural revolution. Think less literally (unless you're KZ, in which case we all understand your disability).

Do you know who Mao was? Do you understand the leftist tradition of self-criticism? Do you know why Somerby is making a fuss about this? Probably not, especially if you are just a troll.

1) Cries every time someone mentions Howler's dementia, then says such comments are typical liberal attacks.

2) Comments repeatedly that "Excessive literalism is a symptom of mental illness or brain injury" when commenters quote the Howler.

3) Accuses every commenter she/he doesn't like of being the commenter he/she dislikes the most (and who, BTW must be mentally ill).

Do I know why "Somerby is making a fuss" about leftist self criticism? I'm not sure. I think it has something to do with the fact that liberals are lazy, dumb, and have dubious morals. But maybe it is because Somerby just likes them.

No, 29 percent weren't "below the poverty line," according to Pew. They were the most financially insecure, according to Pew. (The great majority of those financially insecure respondents reported receiving government poverty benefits, however.)

That's a terminological failure. It doesn't change the facts about Kristof's willingness to pretend "the wealthy" are the only ones who'd malign Kevin Green, based on a single very poorly constructed poll question.

"Despite this fairly obvious fact, Kristof rails against the “wealthy people” who he imagines saying bad things about his hardworking friend. He bases his denunciation on financially secure respondents’ reactions to a single survey question, while failing to note that 29 percent of the most financially insecure people responded the very same way."

"Can’t get the simplest facts right: How broken is our intellectual culture?

How many times does it have to be said? Eligibility for free and reduced-price meals is not a measure of “poverty.”

Eligibility for the program extends to families whose incomes are roughly twice the federal poverty level. When education writers don’t know that, it’s like a sports writer who doesn’t know the number of outs in an inning."

Bob Somerby April 22, 2014

"That said, all sorts of people make the factual error in question. We’ve corrected this howler on several occasions in recent years.

We’ve seen this very basic error made by education reporters at major mainstream publications. On the other hand, it’s a type of error which is becoming more frequent on the “liberal” side of the aisle, as we “liberals” gimmick statistics to drive preferred policy claims."

Bob Somerby January 13, 2015

"It doesn’t help when the liberal world and the mainstream press can’t even speak coherently about this topic. In just the last week, this is the third time we’ve encountered work in major publications in which the poverty rate 1) gets absurdly inflated or 2) is rendered incoherent.

In his long tirades against using free and reduced lunch program eligibility as a substitute for actual measured poverty, Somerby often ignores the point about student performance while railing about errors in income measurement.

Devotee still doesn't get it. Somerby hasn't corrected anything.

That said, I'll use Bob Somerby himself as my guide, paraphrasing from his recent post of January 17, 2015:

"We’ll assume that Somerby is working in good faith. We’ll assume we’re looking at gross incompetence rather than deception."

What was the error in the piece we paraphrase? Lindsay Layton of the Washington Post had written an accurate article but it was below a headline which substituted "poverty" for "low income."

Bob Somerby suggested in a rational world Lyndsey Layton and her "inhuman" editors would be fired.

It's tough to be a troll in the rational world of Bob Somerby and his devoted followers.

Are Anonymous 4:55 and 5:22 the same lib? This obsession to attempt to link my assumed name with some other assumed name is as desperate as NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams pretending to have had his Boeing CH-47 Chinook shot down in Iraq by an enemy rpg.

Brian should resign, blame his mental lapse on a disease brought in by illegal alien children, have a televised public rebirth as a Christian in a swing state mega-church, write a tell all memoir denouncing liberal bias on NBC and alleging repression of negative stories on Muslims and Obama.

He could then announce as a Republican candidate for President.and immediately be the front runner.

How about he merely admits for the last 12 years on numerous occasions he intentionally lied about what occurred in Iraq with his chopper, after finally being busted by a combat veteran, rather than deciding to invoke the noisome excuse that he "misremembered" the event. Or is that type of responsibility too complicated for you?

True. One would have to care about the a liberal guy who is the managing editor of NBC Nightly News and NBC Nightly News anchor, with an audience of 10 million, who now is confirmed to have zero credibility.

" a liberal guy who is the managing editor of NBC Nightly News and NBC Nightly News anchor..."

You're talking about a guy who is on record as proudly calling Rush Limbaugh, "our friend" and who has invited Limbaugh to come on his Nightly News broadcast, because you know, Limbaugh doesn't get enough exposure to spew his hate.Brian Williams is a pampered overpaid pretty boy primadonna phony as has been ably documented on TDH.

"My work has been so cleansed, as I see it, and as I’ve tried, of political opinions over 27 years.... No one gives a rat’s patootie about my opinion, so it’s nice that I don’t have to share it.”— NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing New York City radio show, March 4, 2013.

Match that up to his fawning over Bill Clinton, POTUS Obama, FLOTUS, and liberal causes in general.

Isn't possible that the real problem here has nothing to do with either conservatives or liberals but rather Kristof's dubious habit of using his column to air person feeling about people he knows (Mia Farrow) that are inevitably ambiguous and questionable as matters of judgement and taste?

Well, if that is a major problem than you have pretty much designated all of the Howler as a Problem in Progress. In your opinion.

I differ. Somerby has every right to label liberals. Somerby is himself a liberal by three major categories he himself has detailed.

He is lazy: Four posts in a row on the same topic. Repeated focus on just two papers, one online publication, and one cable network as "the media."

He is dumb: Mistakenly labeling people as "below" federal poverty limits, missing key indictments, falsely reporting college letters of intent, gullibility on weapons searches, and overeliance on rules of thumb

He is disliked: Won't even read his owncomment box, routinely dismisses virtually all females in his line of work, even his imaginary associates are "underlings"and not friends.

It's weird how Kristof accuses everyone else of an empathy gap, but we never hear about what Kristof did to help his friend, or his friend's sons, or his friend's wife. And then half the comments say, "I'm sorry for your loss..." Well, it's not really Kristof's loss. It's the dead man's family's loss.

It is weird. It reminds me of Bob Somerby accusing everyone else of being tribal, stupid, and lazy. We never hear about what Bob would do for our kids, our schools, or our progressive causes. Just what others are doing wrong. And then half the comments say "Well that's not what Bob really said." And its not really the other half's blog. The trolls should just go away.

It surprises me to see Somerby return his blog to the same topic after it was revealed yesterday how badly he erred in characterizing what Pew research had reported.

Since Somerby repeats himself, I shall as well but with greater brevity. Somerby told you yesterday that Kristof was "technically accurate" about the wealthy favoring an insensitive statement about the poor and reliance on government benefits. He wrote: "According to Pew, 54 percent of respondents in the upper 20 percent by income chose" the insensitive statement.

Then Somerby finished his analysis with this:

"Here’s what Kristof didn’t report in his column. According to Pew, 29 percent of people who live below the federal poverty line also agreed with" the same insensitive statement.

Unfortunately for Somerby the PEW study did not base any of its findings on income. They make no mention of how many people, or what percentage of respondents in any income category agree or disagree with any statement in the entire study.

Somerby was factually wrong when he said Kristof was right, and novelizing about non existent data when he said Kristof was leaving important facts out.

Somerby was not content to carefully read the Pew report and simply tell his readers Kristof was terribly wrong about what he said it found about the wealthy. Instead Somerby told you Kristof was right about the wealthy, but wrong to cover up Pew findings about the poor. Then he attacked the people of Pew in a manner consistent with the liberal bashing and intellectual baiting that he hints at so strongly today.

You repeat once again your irrelevant "factually wrong" critique, without making any attempt to explain why that matters so deeply to Somerby's point.

The second comment here, at 1:00PM yesterday, is what you need to deal with, if you imagine yourself to have anything at all worth saying.

For now, no sane person imagines that you do.

"Despite this fairly obvious fact, Kristof rails against the “wealthy people” who he imagines saying bad things about his hardworking friend. He bases his denunciation on financially secure respondents’ reactions to a single survey question, while failing to note that 29 percent of the most financially insecure people responded the very same way."

As we note above, Somerby was not content to violate the rule he laid out in dozens upon dozens of attacks on journalists in misrepresenting information about people at or below poverty. He had to attack the people who did the study whose findings he ginned up.

The researchers were the "gang of Pew eggheads" conjuring up a 1950's term used by a couple of conservative columnists to deride intellectual supporters of Adlai Stevenson. Said Somerby of Kristof:

'Alas! He based his analysis on the latest survey from Pew, the place where American “experts” go to prove they may not be all that sharp.'

So who else might have based an analysis on that gang of eggheads?

Gack!!! Don't Tell Us! Uh Oh! Cover the little analysts' eyes and ears lest they keep us up all night with their screechy wails. Not Bob???

Yes, alas. Bob Somerby. But surely, his defenders will say, it was, like the data comment above, only on a minor technical insignificant point. Let's see about that:

"When Pew did its study of how the press was covering Bush and Gore in the spring of 2000, it reported an astounding tilt in Bush’s favor—and Pew went out of its way to cite Hardball as the largest single source of negative commentary about Gore. And for those of us who still haven’t heard: This is how Bush ended up in the White House!"Howler 11/15/2007

"In their five-month study of the coverage in the spring of 2000, Pew specifically cited Hardball as the place to hear the most Gore-trashing"Howler 11/20/2007

"By the next spring, when Pew released a startling study of the way Bush and Gore were being covered, Pew went out of its way to stress the amount of Gore-trashing it had encountered on Hardball."Howler 1/18/2008

"When Pew did this astounding study of the press corps’ coverage of the character issue, it singled out Hardball as a place where Gore was relentlessly trashed."Howler 4/14/2008

"When Pew presented this astounding study of the way Gore’s character got trashed in early 2000, it singled out Hardball as the show where the attacks were most commonly heard—"Howler 11/23/2008

We don't present these quotes to sing praises for Pew or tar them with guilt by association. Nor would we suggest Somerby kept running to their "startling....astounding...astonishing" five month study to prove he was not all that sharp.

We would be remiss if we did not. at this point, link to that study.

http://www.journalism.org/2000/07/27/a-question-of-character/

The point Somerby kept rehashing about the findings related to Matthews can be found in three sentences of the 14 page report on Pages 6 and 10. If you want to find out if Bob disappears what Pew said about his assertion that this biased coverage put Bush in the White House, carefully read Page 1.

"In short, when it comes to character, what the press is saying about the candidates is hardly dictating what the public thinks."Pew Egghead Gang 7/27/2000

Those eggheads at Pew, the place to go to prove you are not smart.

Or when they happen to support your script that Chris "Almost Killer" Matthews put Bush in the White House and Thousands Upon Thousands of Iraqi's in their graves.

Pew is skewed.In the past they have relied heavily on landline calls.They admit that this produces a less than representative result, and promise to increase the percentage of cell phone calls in the future.Does that mean their polls will be more accurate?I don't know.

"On its face, Kristof is telling a horrible story. In his story, a father seems to have failed his sons—and they seem to be paying the price.

It would hardly be surprising if people thought Kristof’s friend had behaved rather badly. We wouldn’t voice that judgment ourselves. But it would hardly be crazy or strange if someone else ventured such thoughts."

Actually, in Kristof's telling, Kevin Green's unmarried baby mama left him after he got injured and laid off. He proimised to do right by his boys and support them, but the loss of his well being, then his job, then the woman and the sons he loved devastated him. And what was baby mama's response? She had his driver's license yanked making him even more unemployable.

Baby mama had fifteen years to find a good job or another man to support the kids she had. And what happened to her boys is the fault of the injured man she walked out on?

You ask me it would be crazy to blame Kevin and not the "b" person hemessed up falling head over heels for.

No one said Green's baby mama didn't also fulfill the highest ideals of progressives by following her bliss. Statistically speaking there is a good chance she found another man or several and this fact is also part of the story of the tragic outcomes of the kids of these two negligent parents.

That is Bob's point, troll. Kristof did not write a complete biography of the mother and the kids. So it is reasonable to assume people like you would be left to make value judgements that demonstrate the lack of empathy nobody has voiced.

Au contraire! It is quite the opposite of Bob's point to say that "people like you" make value judgements, when absolutely no human being on earth is on record for making any kind of judgment about Kevin Green at all.

But you are forgiven for your confusion after reading all the value judgments Somerby without really knowing all the facts, or even any of them.

How liberal to throw some French at me! Thought I wouldn't get it, eh? Ever heard of Google translator? Ha!

Somerby's point, if you didn't read it, and if you hate Somerby why don't you quit not reading him, is that Kristof never should have written all these personal things about his friend that nobody is talking about. But because he did, but did it poorly, naturally people are going to think bad things about his friend because he sounds like pretty negligent pond scum if you ask me. But you didn't ask. So I didn't say it. Even if it is perfectly OK for me to think it without being scolded by Mother Superior college kid son of a college prof. Which is why like people don't like lazy people like us.

How many times does Somerby need to make this point for you to get it? Four?

I haven't heard a liberal acknowledge that "IF you work you shouldn't be poor" or that deadbeat dads are an issue since Bill Clinton in the 90's. If Kristof wrote a tribute to a friend who produced children in wedlock, raised them and sent them to college, and succeeded by availing himself of the opportunity that exists for everyone, he would be slammed by progressives. Government dependence, failure to support your children much less provide them with an intact home regardless of ability to do otherwise qualify one for sainthood in the progressive world. Parental responsibility and self sufficiency are now solidly right-wing values and ideas and progressives' reactions to their mention show they have developed a pathological aversion to these ethics. To the misery of millions of victims like Green's children.

Spreaking of Sarah Palin and other stalwarts of family values, didn't the entire Palin clan recently show up in a stretch limo at some Alaskan house party where they got involved in a brawl that required the presence of the local gens d'armes?

I don't know about the rest of you, but it is Friday afternoon in my part of Liberalworld and I can't wait to see what a week long build up of seething bile unleashed on Joan Walsh is going to look like.

Why are we wasting our time here with these scolds? We should be celebrating Bruce Jenner's self-mutilation and then all agreeing to pretend he really became female, while shouting down anyone who says he needs psychological help instead.